Sundance stars sound off on gun violence in film

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — The Sundance Film Festival isn't home to many shoot-em-up movies, but action-oriented actors at the festival are facing questions about Hollywood's role in American gun violence.

Guy Pearce and Alexander Skarsgard are among those who say Hollywood shares in the blame.

Pearce is in Park City, Utah, to support the family drama "Breathe In," but he's pulled plenty of imaginary triggers in violent films such as "Lockdown" and "Lawless." He says Hollywood may make guns seem "cool" to the broader culture, but there are vast variations in films' approach to guns.

"Hollywood probably does play a role," Pearce said. "It's a broad spectrum though. There are films that use guns flippantly, then there are films that use guns in a way that would make you never want to look at a gun ever again — because of the effect that it's had on the other people in the story at the time. So to sort of just say Hollywood and guns, it's a broad palette that you're dealing with, I think. But I'm sure it does have an effect. As does video games, as do stories on the news. All sorts of things probably seep into the consciousness."

Skarsgard, who blasted away aliens in "Battleship," says he agrees that Hollywood has some responsibility for how it depicts violence on-screen.

"When (NRA executive director) Wayne LaPierre blames it on Hollywood and says guns have nothing to do with it, there is a reason," he said. "I mean, I'm from Sweden. . We do have violent video games in Sweden. My teenage brother plays them. He watches Hollywood movies. We do have insane people in Sweden and in Canada. But we don't have 30,000 gun deaths a year.

"Yes, there's only 10 million people in Sweden as opposed to over 300 (million) in the United States. But the numbers just don't add up. There are over 300 million weapons in this country. And they help. They do kill people."

Ellen Page, who co-stars with Skarsgard in "The East," noted that gun restrictions are much more pervasive in her home country, Canada.

"You can't buy some crazy assault rifle that is made for the military to kill people. And like that to me is just like a no-brainer," she said. "Why should that just be out and be able to be purchased? That does not make me feel safe as a person."

Skarsgard says it may be time to revisit the Second Amendment.

"The whole Second Amendment discussion is ridiculous to me. Because that was written over 200 years ago, and it was a militia to have muskets to fight off Brits," he said. "The Brits aren't coming. It's 2013. Things have changed. And for someone to mail-order an assault rifle is crazy to me. They don't belong anywhere but the military to me. You don't need that to protect your home or shoot deer, you know."

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AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ryanwrd .

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Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Apple reports flat first-quarter earnings; shares drop nearly 5%

Apple Inc. reported flat fiscal first-quarter earnings, sending shares plummeting 5% in after-hours trading.

Apple said revenue increased 18% to $54.5 billion in the first quarter, which ended in December. Profit rose only slightly to $13.08 billion, or $13.81 a share, from $13.06 billion, or $13.87, a year earlier.

Apple had previously told Wall Street analysts that for its first quarter, investors should expect the company to report $52 billion in revenue and $11.75 a share in earnings. The consensus among Wall Street analysts was that Apple would report $54.7 billion in revenue and $13.41 a share in earnings.

LIVE UPDATES: Apple shares plunge as earnings disappoint

In addition, Apple said it sold a record 47.8 million iPhones in the last quarter, up from the 37 million iPhones it sold in the same quarter in 2011. The company sold 22.9 million iPads, also a record, up from 15.4 million.

Despite the record number of iPhones sold, some analysts were expecting more.

“Meeting expectations is not enough for Apple,” said Colin Gillis of BGC Financial. “People are looking on the north side somewhere of 50 million phones. So that’s a little bit of a disappointment…. International sales were a little weaker than people expected. So we’ll see how that shakes out.”

“Overall, compared to other companies, it’s impressive,” said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. “But for Apple’s standards, it’s not great, but really good.

“I do think this somewhat fuels the perception that Apple is slowing down a bit, in terms of being able to consistently set expectations. And it’s driven by the fact that some of its competitors are catching up, and in some markets have already caught up.”

Immediately after the numbers were released, Apple's stock fell 4.5% to $490.48 in after-hours trading. During regular trading, shares rose $9.24, or 1.8%, to $514.01.

At 2 p.m., the company began its earnings calls with analysts. The Cupertino, Calif., company could hint at its upcoming plans for cheaper iPhones, new iPads and possibly some long-awaited TV news, although it seems unlikely for the typically tight-lipped company. Still, expect analysts to try their best to finagle information from Chief Executive Tim Cook and other company executives during the question-and-answer portion of the call.

For the current quarter, Apple said it expected revenue of $41 billion to $43 billion, gross margin of 37.5% to 38.5% and operating expenses of $3.8 billion to $3.9 billion.

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Follow @obrien and @byandreachang

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Election of new DNC leaders points up tensions with White House

WASHINGTON -- After a messy fight that highlighted strains with the White House, the Democratic National Committee completed what should have been the routine election of a new slate of officers Tuesday.

As expected, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida was given another term as national party chairwoman. But below that level, chaos reigned for a time as DNC members balked at rubber-stamping a White House-approved list of replacements for several veterans of the pre-Obama era.

Among the incoming DNC leaders are vice chairwomen Maria Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles labor official, and Tulsi Gabbard, the newly elected congresswoman from Hawaii. Henry R. Munoz III of San Antonio was named finance chairman, the first Latino in that post.

Complete coverage of the 2013 inauguration

But many on the DNC strongly resisted the forced removal of longtime activist Alice Travis Germond as DNC secretary. Highly popular with the membership, Germond, who calls the roll of the states at presidential nominating conventions, is only the third person to hold that job since 1944. In order to tighten its control of the DNC, the White House wanted to replace her with Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore, who has no experience in national politics.

Angered by the handling of the leadership change by Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama organizer who serves as the party’s executive director, DNC members tried to postpone election of the secretary until the fall. A clearly flustered Schultz, after halting the proceedings and huddling offstage with Germond, returned to announce that Germond had agreed to become secretary emeritus of the party and an at-large DNC member. With that, the slate of officers, including Rawlings-Blake, was approved.

The unexpected drama came only days after President Obama announced creation of his new national advocacy operation, Organizing for Action, widely seen as undermining the DNC’s already weakened status as a political organization.

Schultz, who was Obama’s pick as party chairwoman during his first term, defended the president’s decision, telling the DNC that the new Obama group didn’t pose a threat to the national party.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s second inauguration

Schultz said that she was “thrilled” that Obama’s campaign hadn’t ended with the 2012 election and that his new organization would be “complementing the work we are doing.” She said the Obama group would be training and engaging grass-roots volunteers “so that our work at the Democratic Party can continue to be about electing Democrats up and down the ballot.”

The dispute during the meeting at a Washington hotel, one day after Obama’s inaugural celebration, dragged on for so long that Vice President Joe Biden was forced to cool his heels in a nearby ballroom until the DNC members finished their business.

Although the party organization’s influence may be fading, the hundreds of national committee members still retain at least one measure of clout: They are automatic “superdelegates” to the Democrats’ presidential nominating conventions (though Obama aides briefly considered, and then rejected, getting rid of their delegate power several years ago).

Biden, who would covet those DNC delegate votes if he ran for president in 2016, eventually was able to schmooze with the members at a private reception after the meeting.

PHOTOS: Past presidential inaugurations

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

Paul.west@latimes.com

Twitter: @paulwestdc

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BlackBerry Z10 Looks Like iPhone 5, Takes on Siri

RIM is set to announce the first devices running its new BlackBerry 10 operating system at an event on January 30. A lucky few, however, have already gotten their hands on what looks to be the new hardware, including German site TelekomPresse.

[More from Mashable: Watch These iPhone Knockoffs Get Bulldozed]

The site has the BlackBerry Z10, a touchscreen device with a similar look to some of the other popular smartphones out there — especially the iPhone 5.

Curious to see how the two compared, they put them side-by-side in the video above, running through both the physical design of both devices as well as some of their features.

[More from Mashable: RIM May License BlackBerry 10 to Other Manufacturers]

Notably, the video shows a Siri-like voice control functionality in BlackBerry 10, that we haven’t seen previously. As you can see in the test above, it beats Siri for speed.

SEE ALSO: RIM Adds 15,000 BlackBerry 10 Apps in a Weekend

While similar at first glance, design-wise the two phones do have some differences. The Z10 has a 4.2-inch screen, slightly larger than the iPhone 5’s 4-inch display. Both phones have a power button on top, however, the button on the BlackBerry is in the center of the top of the phone, while the iPhone’s is on the right on the device.

The volume controls are on the right side of the Z10, and left side of the iPhone 5. When it comes to power, the connection for the iPhone 5 is on the bottom of the device with the headphone jack, while the HDMI and USB connections on the Z10 are located on the left.

Check out the video above for a look at the full comparison of the two devices. Are you looking forward to BlackBerry 10? Can the new OS save RIM? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

BlackBerry 10 Lock Screen

You unlock a BlackBerry 10 device by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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'Mama' tops box office with $32.1 million

NEW YORK (AP) — Arnold Schwarzenegger's post-governorship comeback fizzled at the box office, as his "The Last Stand" earned just $7.2 million over the three-day holiday weekend.

Instead, the Jessica Chastain horror film "Mama" surpassed expectations with a chart-topping $32.1 million opening from Friday through Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In its second week of wide release, the Osama bin Laden hunt thriller "Zero Dark Thirty" slid to the second spot with $18.6 million, meaning Chastain-led films held the top two spots.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Mama," Universal, $32,147,815, 2,647 locations, $12,145 average, $32,147,815, one week.

2. "Zero Dark Thirty," Sony, $18,600,381, 2,946 locations, $6,314 average, $56,945,138, five weeks.

3. "Silver Linings Playbook," Weinstein Co., $12,740,379, 2,523 locations, $5,050 average, $56,699,649, 10 weeks.

4. "Gangster Squad," Warner Bros., $10,128,178, 3,103 locations, $3,264 average, $33,238,238, two weeks.

5. "A Haunted House," Open Road Films, $9,472,030, 2,160 locations, $4,385 average, $31,085,207, two weeks.

6. "Broken City," Fox, $9,459,459, 2,620 locations, $3,610 average, $9,459,459, one week.

7. "Django Unchained," Weinstein Co., $9,216,113, 2,516 locations, $3,663 average, $139,334,848, four weeks.

8. "Les Miserables," Universal, $9,013,605, 2,579 locations, $3,495 average, $131,571,625, four weeks.

9. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," Warner Bros., $7,623,310, 2,323 locations, $3,282 average, $288,613,051, six weeks.

10. "The Last Stand," Lionsgate, $7,213,327, 2,913 locations, $2,476 average, $7,213,327, one week.

11. "Lincoln," Disney, $6,678,228, 2,174 locations, $3,072 average, $161,814,307, 11 weeks.

12. "Parental Guidance," Fox, $5,632,836, 2,337 locations, $2,410 average, $67,657,990, four weeks.

13. "Life of Pi," Fox, $4,207,186, 1,256 locations, $3,350 average, $100,044,491, nine weeks.

14. "The Impossible," Summit, $3,012,182, 886 locations, $3,400 average, $10,728,747, five weeks.

15. "Argo," Warner Bros., $2,717,033, 756 locations, $3,594 average, $115,238,587, 15 weeks.

16. "Jack Reacher," Paramount, $2,685,905, 1,707 locations, $1,573 average, $76,863,238, five weeks.

17. "This Is 40," Universal, $2,297,685, 1,232 locations, $1,865 average, $65,178,685, five weeks.

18. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $2,050,610, 1,312 locations, $1,563 average, $181,557,914, 12 weeks.

19. "Texas Chainsaw 3D," Lionsgate, $1,429,933, 1,474 locations, $970 average, $33,622,871, three weeks.

20. "Skyfall," Sony, $1,143,895, 507 locations, $2,256 average, $301,030,969, 11 weeks.

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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The Well Column: Facing Cancer, a Stark Choice

In the 1970s, women’s health advocates were highly suspicious of mastectomies. They argued that surgeons — in those days, pretty much an all-male club — were far too quick to remove a breast after a diagnosis of cancer, with disfiguring results.

But today, the pendulum has swung the other way. A new generation of women want doctors to take a more aggressive approach, and more and more are asking that even healthy breasts be removed to ward off cancer before it can strike.

Researchers estimate that as many as 15 percent of women with breast cancer — 30,000 a year — opt to have both breasts removed, up from less than 3 percent in the late 1990s. Notably, it appears that the vast majority of these women have never received genetic testing or counseling and are basing the decision on exaggerated fears about their risk of recurrence.

In addition, doctors say an increasing number of women who have never had a cancer diagnosis are demanding mastectomies based on genetic risk. (Cancer databases don’t track these women, so their numbers are unknown.)

“We are confronting almost an epidemic of prophylactic mastectomy,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I think the medical community has taken notice. We don’t have data that say oncologically this is a necessity, so why are women making this choice?”

One reason may be the never-ending awareness campaigns that have left many women in perpetual fear of the disease. Improvements in breast reconstruction may also be driving the trend, along with celebrities who go public with their decision to undergo preventive mastectomy.

This month Allyn Rose, a 24-year-old Miss America contestant from Washington, D.C., made headlines when she announced plans to have both her healthy breasts removed after the pageant; both her mother and her grandmother died from breast cancer. The television personality Giuliana Rancic, 37, and the actress Christina Applegate, 41, also talked publicly about having double mastectomies after diagnoses of early-stage breast cancer.

“You’re not going to find other organs that people cut out of their bodies because they’re worried about disease,” said the medical historian Dr. Barron H. Lerner, author of “The Breast Cancer Wars” (2001). “Because breast cancer is a disease that is so emotionally charged and gets so much attention, I think at times women feel almost obligated to be as proactive as possible — that’s the culture of breast cancer.”

Most of the data on prophylactic mastectomy come from the University of Minnesota, where researchers tracked contralateral mastectomy trends (removing a healthy breast alongside one with cancer) from 1998 to 2006. Dr. Todd M. Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology, said double mastectomy rates more than doubled during that period and the rise showed no signs of slowing.

From those trends as well as anecdotal reports, Dr. Tuttle estimates that at least 15 percent of women who receive a breast cancer diagnosis will have the second, healthy breast removed. “It’s younger women who are doing it,” he said.

The risk that a woman with breast cancer will develop cancer in the other breast is about 5 percent over 10 years, Dr. Tuttle said. Yet a University of Minnesota study found that women estimated their risk to be more than 30 percent.

“I think there are women who markedly overestimate their risk of getting cancer,” he said.

Most experts agree that double mastectomy is a reasonable option for women who have a strong genetic risk and have tested positive for a breast cancer gene. That was the case with Allison Gilbert, 42, a writer in Westchester County who discovered her genetic risk after her grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother died of ovarian cancer.

Even so, she delayed the decision to get prophylactic mastectomy until her aunt died from an aggressive breast cancer. In August, she had a double mastectomy. (She had her ovaries removed earlier.)

“I feel the women in my family didn’t have a way to avoid their fate,” said Ms. Gilbert, author of the 2011 book “Parentless Parents,” about how losing a parent influences one’s own style of parenting. “Here I was given an incredible opportunity to know what I have and to do something about it and, God willing, be around for my kids longer.”

Even so, she said her decisions were not made lightly. The double mastectomy and reconstruction required an initial 11 1/2-hour surgery and an “intense” recovery. She got genetic counseling, joined support groups and researched her options.

But doctors say many women are not making such informed decisions. Last month, University of Michigan researchers reported on a study of more than 1,446 women who had breast cancer. Four years after their diagnosis, 35 percent were considering removing their healthy breast and 7 percent had already done so.

Notably, most of the women who had a double mastectomy were not at high risk for a cancer recurrence. In fact, studies suggest that most women who have double mastectomies never seek genetic testing or counseling.

“Breast cancer becomes very emotional for people, and they view a breast differently than an arm or a required body part that you use every day,” said Sarah T. Hawley, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. “Women feel like it’s a body part over which they totally have a choice, and they say, ‘I want to put this behind me — I don’t want to worry about it anymore.’ ”

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Super Bowl chicken wings getting pricier, less plentiful

Americans are going to chow down on 1.23 billion chicken wings during Super Bowl weekend this year. But there will be fewer wings available and they’ll cost more, according to an annual report.

The NFL championship game, this year between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, is the biggest day of the year for chicken wings, according to the National Chicken Council.

This time around, however, there will be 12.3 million fewer wings eaten than last year, or a 1% decline, according to the trade group.

The group attributed the slide to fewer chickens in 2012, as corn and animal feed prices soared to record highs amid a severe summer drought and ethanol fuel production regulations.

And with shrinking supply and strong demand, the chicken council said wholesale wings will be at their “most expensive ever.” Wings are currently the highest priced portion of a chicken and cost $2.11 a pound in the Northeast, up 12% from a year earlier.

So are we headed for a hot wings equivalent of the bacon shortage predicted last year? Not to worry, said Bill Roenigk, chief economist for the chicken trade group.

“The good news for consumers is that restaurants plan well in advance to ensure they have plenty of wings for the big game,” he said. “And some restaurants are promoting boneless wings and some are offering flexible serving sizes.”

One caveat, however.

“If you’re planning to cook your own wings, I wouldn’t advise being in line at the supermarket two hours before kickoff,” Roenigk said.

ALSO:

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L.A. church leaders sought to hide sex abuse cases from authorities

Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.

The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.

In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.

One such case that has previously received little attention is that of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted preying for decades on undocumented children in predominantly Spanish-speaking parishes. After Garcia's discharge from a New Mexico treatment center for pedophile clergy, Mahony ordered him to stay away from California "for the foreseeable future" in order to avoid legal accountability, the files show. "I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors," the archbishop wrote to the treatment center's director in July 1986.

The following year, in a letter to Mahony about bringing Garcia back to work in the archdiocese, Curry said he was worried that victims in Los Angeles might see the priest and call police.

"[T]here are numerous — maybe twenty — adolescents or young adults that Peter was involved with in a first degree felony manner. The possibility of one of these seeing him is simply too great," Curry wrote in May 1987.

Garcia returned to the Los Angeles area later that year; the archdiocese did not give him a ministerial assignment because he refused to take medication to suppress his sexual urges. He left the priesthood in 1989, according to the church.

Garcia was never prosecuted and died in 2009. The files show he admitted to a therapist that he had sexually abused boys "on and off" since his 1966 ordination. He assured church officials his victims were unlikely to come forward because of their immigration status. In at least one case, according to a church memo, he threatened to have a boy he had raped deported if he went to police.

The memos are from personnel files for 14 priests submitted to a judge on behalf of a man who claims he was abused by one of the priests, Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. The man's attorney, Anthony De Marco, wrote in court papers the files show "a practice of thwarting law enforcement investigations" by the archdiocese. It's not always clear from the records whether the church followed through on all its discussions about eluding police, but in some cases, such as Garcia’s, it did.

Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations. In a statement Monday, he apologized once again and recounted meetings he's had with about 90 victims of abuse.

"I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day," he wrote. "As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story."

"It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing," he added. "I am sorry."

Curry did not return calls seeking comment. He currently serves as the archdiocese's auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.

The confidential files of at least 75 more accused abusers are slated to become public in coming weeks under the terms of a 2007 civil settlement with more than 500 victims. A private mediator had ordered the names of the church hierarchy redacted from those documents, but after objections from The Times and the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge ruled that the names of Mahony, Curry and others in supervisory roles should not be blacked out.

Garcia's was one of three cases in 1987 in which top church officials discussed ways they could stymie law enforcement. In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his "sex partner," Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution.

"He is afraid ... records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him," Curry wrote to Mahony. "He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law."

Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese "if need be." He called it "surprising" that a church-paid counselor hadn't reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe "agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him."

Perhaps, Curry added, the priest could be sent to "a lawyer who is also a psychiatrist" thereby putting "the reports under the protection of privilege."

Curry expressed similar concerns to Mahony about Father Michael Baker, who had admitted his abuse of young boys during a private 1986 meeting with the archbishop.

In a memo about Baker's return to ministry, Curry wrote, "I see a difficulty here, in that if he were to mention his problem with child abuse it would put the therapist in the position of having to report him … he cannot mention his past problem."

Mahony's response to the memo was handwritten across the bottom of the page: "Sounds good —please proceed!!" Two decades would pass before authorities gathered enough information to convict Baker and Wempe of abusing boys.

Federal and state prosecutors have investigated possible conspiracy cases against the archdiocese hierarchy. Former Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in 2007 that his probe into the conduct of high-ranking church officials was on hold until his prosecutors could access the personnel files of all the abusers. The U.S. attorney's office convened a grand jury in 2009, but no charges resulted.

During those investigations, the church was forced by judges to turn over some but not all of the records to prosecutors. The district attorney's office has said its prosecutors plan to review priest personnel files as they are released.

Mahony was appointed archbishop in 1985 after five years leading the Stockton diocese. While there, he had dealt with three allegations of clergy abuse, including one case in which he personally reported the priest to police.

In Los Angeles, he tapped Curry, an Irish-born priest, as vicar of clergy. The records show that sex abuse allegations were handled almost exclusively by the archbishop and his vicar. Memos that crossed their desks included graphic details, such as one letter from another priest accusing Garcia of tying up and raping a young boy in Lancaster.

Mahony personally phoned the priests' therapists about their progress, wrote the priests encouraging letters and dispatched Curry to visit them at a New Mexico facility, Servants of the Paraclete, that treated pedophile priests.

"Each of you there at Jemez Springs is very much in my prayers and I call you to mind each day during my celebration of the Eucharist," Mahony wrote to Wempe.

The month after he was named archbishop, Mahony met with Garcia to discuss his molestation of boys, according to a letter the priest wrote while in therapy. Mahony instructed him to be "very low key" and assured him "no one was looking at him for any criminal action," Garcia recalled in a letter to an official at Servants of the Paraclete.

In a statement Monday on behalf of the archdiocese, a lawyer for the church said its policy in the late 1980s was to let victims and their families decide whether to go to the police.

"Not surprisingly, the families of victims frequently did not wish to report to police and have their child become the center of a public prosecution," lawyer J. Michael Hennigan wrote.

He acknowledged memos written in those years "sometimes focused more on the needs of the perpetrator than on the serious harm that had been done to the victims."

"That is part of the past," Hennigan wrote. "We are embarrassed and at times ashamed by parts of the past. But we are proud of our progress, which is continuing."

Hennigan said that the years in which Mahony dealt with Garcia were "a period of deepening understanding of the nature of the problem of sex abuse both here and in our society in general" and that the archdiocese subsequently changed completely its approach to reports of abuse.

"We now have retired FBI agents who thoroughly investigate every allegation, even anonymous calls. We aggressively assist in the criminal prosecution of offenders," Hennigan wrote.

Mahony and Curry have been questioned under oath in depositions numerous times about their handling of molestation cases. The men, however, have never been asked about attempts to stymie law enforcement, because the personnel files documenting those discussions were only provided to civil attorneys in recent months. De Marco, the lawyer who filed the records in civil court this month, asked a judge last week to order Curry and Mahony to submit to new depositions “regarding their actions, knowledge and intent as referenced in these files.” A hearing on that request is set for February.

In a 2010 deposition, Mahony acknowledged the archdiocese had never called police to report sexual abuse by a priest before 2000. He said church officials were unable to do so because they didn't know the names of the children harmed.

"In my experience, you can only call the police when you've got victims you can talk to," Mahony said.

When an attorney for an alleged victim suggested "the right thing to do" would have been to summon police immediately, Mahony replied, "Well, today it would. But back then that isn't the way those matters were approached."

Since clergy weren't legally required to report suspected child abuse until 1997, Mahony said, the people who should have alerted police about pedophiles like Baker and Wempe were victims' therapists or other "mandatory reporters" of child abuse.

"Psychologists, counselors … they were also the first ones to learn [of abuse] so they were normally the ones who made the reports," he said.

In Garcia's 451-page personnel file, one voice decried the church's failures to protect the victims and condemned the priest as someone who deserved to be behind bars. Father Arturo Gomez, an associate pastor at a predominantly Spanish-speaking church near Olvera Street, wrote to a regional bishop in 1989, saying he was "angry" and "disappointed" at the church's failure to help Garcia's victims. He expressed shock that the bishop, Juan A. Arzube, had told the family of two of the boys that Garcia had thought of taking his own life.

"You seemed to be at that moment more concern[ed] for the criminal rather than the victum! (sic)" Gomez wrote to Arzube in 1989.

Gomez urged church leaders to identify others who may have been harmed by Garcia and to get them help, but was told they didn't know how.

"If I was the father … Peter Garcia would be in prison now; and I would probably have begun a lawsuit against the archdiocese," the priest wrote in the letter. "The parents … of the two boys are more forgiving and compassionate than I would be."

victoria.kim@latimes.com

ashley.powers@latimes.com

harriet.ryan@latimes.com

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Putin orders Russian computers to be protected after spy attacks

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian authorities to protect state computers from hacking attacks, the Kremlin said on Monday, after an Internet security firm said a spy network had infiltrated government and embassy computers across the former Soviet bloc.

Dubbed Red October, the network used phishing attacks – or unsolicited emails to intended targets – to infect the computers of embassies and other state institutions with a program designed to harvest intelligence and send it back to a server.

Putin signed a decree on January 15 empowering the Federal Security Service (FSB) to “create a state system for the detection, prevention and liquidation of the effects of computer attacks on the information resources of the Russian Federation”.

State computer and telecommunications networks protected by the cyber security system should include those inside Russia and at its embassies and consulates abroad, according to the decree, which was published on a Kremlin website on Monday.

The Russian Internet security firm Kaspersky Labs said last week that the computer espionage network, discovered last October, had been seeking intelligence from Eastern European and ex-Soviet states including Russia since 2007. (http://r.reuters.com/mag45t )

Many of the systems infected belonged to diplomatic missions, Vitaly Kamluk, an expert in computer viruses at Kaspersky Labs, said last week. He declined to name specific countries.

Kamluk said last week that the network was still active, and that law enforcement agencies in several European countries were investigating it.

Kaspersky Labs said the infiltrators had created more than 60 domain names, mostly in Russia and Germany, that worked as proxies to hide the location of their real server.

The FSB declined immediate comment last week when asked whether Russia had taken action to bring any suspected members of the espionage network to justice, or acted to improve Internet security in light of the discovery.

The FSB – the main successor agency of the Soviet KGB – requested a written query, to which it has not yet responded. The Kremlin declined immediate comment on Monday when asked whether Putin’s decree was linked to Red October.

(Reporting by Steve Gutterman and Thomas Grove; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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